


a decade under the influence

by adreamaloud, daneorange (adreamaloud)



Series: everything must go [2]
Category: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Orange is the New Black
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-09
Updated: 2014-10-09
Packaged: 2018-02-20 11:36:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2427239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adreamaloud/pseuds/adreamaloud, https://archiveofourown.org/users/adreamaloud/pseuds/daneorange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>it goes for paris first. piper forgets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a decade under the influence

**Author's Note:**

> Liberties have been taken, all errors are mine.

It goes for Paris first.

Paris is definitely not among Piper’s more stellar moments – she remembers the regret, sure, but she knows an irreparable thing when she sees one. The damage has been done.

“My mom died.” The scene fast forwards to that moment with Alex sitting on the edge of the bed, quiet and dazed, and Piper feels that _lurch_ again in the pit of her stomach. She hasn’t felt it in a long time, but it’s something one never really forgets.

“I’m sorry Al, but this doesn’t change anything.” The ground rumbles, like the Earth, too, is breaking from underneath; it nearly throws her off-balance, and out of instinct her hand shoots out to grip the bedpost. “I can’t--” The words feel extra sharp in her mouth. “I can’t be your girlfriend anymore.”

The look on Alex’s face starts blurring, but it’s not like her disappointment is anything but crystal clear. “Yeah, and apparently, not even my friend.”

 _Not even my friend._ Piper remembers carrying the weight of that moment all day, her footsteps heavy. She takes her bag and walks out the door, leaving the room crumbling behind her, the walls falling down.

When she looks back, everything’s down to rubble.

Paris is gone, and so is Alex.

*

 _What now?_ Piper walks through deserted streets, her bag in hand. _It’s over then? No more Alex?_ She thought it’d be harder – that Alex would be everywhere she turns, and that the doctors would have to zap her out every single time, like they’re putting out a light.

But Piper’s been walking for what feels like hours, and still, nothing. _My mind’s an abandoned wasteland._ _I can’t even help a lobotomy along, can I?_ Her soles are burning, and the road ahead is an endless highway with no traffic in sight.

Piper sits on the curb, right beside her luggage. Realizing what she’d been holding on all along, she can’t help but laugh. _True to form, Chapman,_ she thinks, disgusted. She remembers Alex from Paris a while ago, disheveled and out of her depth. _And apparently not even my friend._

She looks up to see overcast skies. She doesn’t remember this road from Paris at all – must be an amalgam of roads from all their travels, and this stretch looks oddly like Bogota – but she remembers how a light drizzle fell as she walked away from their Paris hotel years ago.

_Can you find us two seats on the next flight out?_

_You’re still leaving? Are you fucking serious?_

_My mother just died._

Piper screws her eyes shut, getting up from the pavement, leaving her bag behind.

When she opens them again, she’s holding an old resume and ordering a margarita.

“So, Piper Chapman.” _Ah, my favorite Alex,_ Piper thinks, turning to look. “What else do I need to know about you?”

There’s that familiar thud in her chest again as Alex leans in closer. “Who are you?” Piper knows she has to play this memory through.

“My name is Alex.” She flickers for a moment, and Piper blinks. _Any moment now._

“And what do you do, Alex,” Piper manages, trying to keep her smile on, even as the edges of her start fraying. “Aside from make fun of strangers in bars?”

“I work for—”

She doesn’t even get to the end of it. Piper lets out a small gasp. “ _No._ ” When she reaches for her, her fingers seep through the skin as Alex fades to black.

Just like that, Piper’s alone sitting in an empty bar. Her margarita glass is broken, and she’s lost another Alex.

*

Piper finds herself going in circles inside an empty airport next, stopping only to find an almost empty baggage conveyor belt, moving a solitary suitcase along. Piper approaches slowly. _Is this mine?_ There’s a twinge of recognition as the navy blue suitcase comes nearer and Piper hauls it right out when it reaches her.

The name on the tag is not Piper’s, not _exactly,_ but it’s an alias she recognizes from one of their trips— _Was it to Sweden?_ – and right there she finds herself laughing, the sounding echoing off the airport’s bare walls. She looks around, looking for a Customs clerk to skip. There is none.

Overhead, the disembodied voice of a woman announces garbled flight details in a language Piper doesn’t even recognize as remotely _anything_.   

 _Alex should be here._ Piper spins around, surprised by the sudden influx of passengers, all of them faceless. They mill about wordlessly, filling the lounge with the sound of their shuffling, their murmurs completely unintelligible.

Piper finds herself backing into a hallway, confused.

“Welcome to Belgium, babe.”

Piper gasps, surprised. _Fucking hell._ “There you are. Where have you been?”

“What do you mean, where have _I_ been? Where did _you_ come from?”

Piper looks around, noting how the people have begun vanishing one by one. “I came from there,” she says, pointing just like she remembers.

“You skipped Customs?”

“Should I go back?”

“ _Fuck_ no,” says Alex, and Piper allows herself to look more closely now. _No need to be tense,_ she tells herself, trying to relax her shoulders. It’s hard to shake out the memory of it – how _scared_ she’d been, how _worried._ The feeling’s firmly twined around the memory as it is. “You’re fucking _brilliant._ ”

Piper allows herself a smile. _Look at this gorgeous idiot,_ she thinks, staring at Alex’s hair as she follows her out, her hand in Alex’s.

 _I’m going to eat you for dinner._ Piper knows it’s all in her head now, but still, it sends her the shivers.

Alex’s cab is waiting right outside, and Piper climbs into the passenger seat as Alex puts the suitcase in the trunk. The driver clambers out slowly, just as Piper remembers. For some reason, she feels so exhausted, eyes closing as her head finds the surface of the backseat. _Just for a sec,_ she thinks. _Just to rest for a sec._

When she opens them again, the cab hasn’t moved and the driver’s seat is still empty. _Well, shit._ Confused, she climbs out of the car, only to find herself in the middle of an abandoned parking lot.  

The trunk’s open. Her suitcase is nowhere in sight. She looks around -- no driver, no Alex.

_God damn it._

*

Piper runs – the maze doesn’t make sense, of course it doesn’t, and the doors lead to inexplicable places. Like Cambodia, for instance – Piper had opened that door quite reluctantly, to be honest, but when she smelled the sea she _knew_ at once.

Alex wouldn’t be so hard to find, not on the beach.

Piper treads slowly, confident, letting her toes sink into the sand. Oh how she loved Cambodia – the quiet, the isolation, the sun. She remembers getting sunburned and Alex laughing as she applied first aid; she remembers the look on Alex’s face, the way she’d blown gently on the surface of her skin, trying to soothe her. That had been everything.

_Everything else was just background._

“Hey.” Alex greets her first, squinting, the sun in her face. She’s sitting on the sand with her knees up against her chest. “What’re you doing?”

Piper shrugs. “Erasing you.”

Alex laughs. “Oh,” she says, looking down at her feet, half-buried in wet sand. “So we’re doing that now, huh?”

“You erased me first,” says Piper, trying not to sound too offended. She remembers getting the card and the stern warning. _Please do not mention this relationship to her again._ Like it was all so easy; like she had anything else left. “I guess we’re now even.”

“I guess.” Alex pats the space beside her. “Doesn’t matter. We’re in _your_ head now.” She looks at Piper calmly, hand still on the sand. “Come sit. Sunset’s coming.”

Piper turns her head toward the sea, like she’s just remembering where they are right now. The water’s already that trademark golden color now; no doubt this sunset will be epic. She looks at the space beside Alex before shrugging. _Might as well_. She lowers herself slowly, settling right beside Alex, relishing her warmth.

“It’s so beautiful,” Piper sighs, watching the sun descend slowly. She lets herself lean against Alex lightly, her head tilted. “Why did you do it, Alex?”

Alex clears her throat, staying quiet for a moment. Inch by inch the sun starts sinking further into the horizon, the dark slowly creeping in. “Like you left me with a choice,” she says quietly. “You left me when I needed you most.”

“I’m not proud of that,” Piper says. “But it was for the best.”

“For _whose_ best?” asks Alex. “Not that it matters now. I mean, we’re in your head, you’re having a lobotomy – you do realize that means taking bits and pieces off your brain, Pipes?”

“I _know_ ,” says Piper. “Trust me--I did not _want_ to have to do this.”

“But I did it to you first.”

“But _you_ did this to me first,” Piper says. “You _knew –_ I told you, I did not have anyone left.”

Alex looks at her, smiling. The moment’s so bittersweet, Piper almost tastes it on her tongue. “You and me both now, kid,” she just says, looking back out. It gets darker as the sun disappears completely, and Piper feels the tears come on, her vision of Alex blurring.

 _You and me both now._ “Hey Alex,” she says, reaching out. Night has fallen so quickly that Piper has to strain to see Alex’s silhouette in the pitch dark. “What if we stay this time?”

“Let me tell you something about the guys you let into your head,” Alex says, inching closer as she touches Piper’s face tenderly. “They’re pretty damn good.”

“Hm?” Piper leans into Alex’s hands. _So warm,_ she thinks. _So safe._ If anybody had to ask her now what home feels like, she’d point to this.

“Don’t close your eyes,” says Alex, tapping lightly at the pulse point on her neck. “If you do, it’s game over.”

 “I figured.” Piper forces her eyes wider, willing them to adjust to the dark. Slowly, Alex comes back to her, the outline of her smile now visible. “There you are,” she whispers, pressing her forehead against Alex’s. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Alex’s smile widens further to a grin. “They’ll figure this out soon enough. You got to work on your escape skills.”

“My escape skills?”

“Yeah—maybe take me to places they wouldn’t think they’d find me.”

“Like— _hide_ you?”

Alex bites down on her lip. “Well, yeah. You’ve had a lot of practice, haven’t you?”

Something shifts inside Piper. _Invisible woman._ “That’s—that’s not fair.”

“When has anything between us been _fair_?”

Piper notes the waves crashing in harder, and she finds herself shivering against the sea spray.

“They’re _close_ ,” Alex says.

“What?”

“You hear that?”

Piper pushes herself off Alex, if only to tune in more closely: The tell-tale rumble of thunder faraway. “Thunderstorm’s coming,” Piper says. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Ooh,” Alex coos, childishly. “An adventure.”

Piper swats her in the arm, laughing as she pulls her up with her. “I said -- let’s _fucking_ go.”

*

“Well.” Alex clears her throat, looking around. “When I said I’ve always wanted to see your room—”

Piper leans against her shut door. “You said to put you where they wouldn’t think I’d have a memory of you.” She watches as Alex amusedly runs her hand across Piper’s lilac sheets, absently patting her pillows. “I haven’t been in this room since...”

“Fourteen? Fifteen?” Alex offers, sliding out an old magazine from under her pillow. “Devon Sawa? Really?”

Piper sticks her tongue out at her, yanking the magazine out of Alex’s hands. “Well, sorry I’m not a cool enough fifteen-year-old for you,” she says. She flips through the pages idly, smiling to herself. _A couple of lifetimes ago, isn’t this?_ “What were _you_ like? Probably had your room wallpapered in black.”

Alex shrugs, making a show of scanning Piper’s walls, at the time filled with photos from younger years – there’s Piper with Cal one summer, their scrunched up faces posed by the pool; there’s Piper from camp a couple of years back, grinning widely despite her sunburned nose. There’s one from Christmas, wearing the dress her mother gave her for the occasion, and one from her birthday the previous year, where she is posed with her dad, cheek against his.

Piper watches the look on Alex’s face shift as her eyes move from photo to photo. Alex leans back onto her elbows, sinking into Piper’s teenage bed. “You ever wonder how it would have gone, had we met when we were younger?”

Piper laughs. “I don’t think you’d be friends with me at all.”

“Are you kidding me?” Alex asks, laughing along. “You’d probably be insufferable.” Piper laughs along for a bit before Alex quiets down slightly. “Besides. I don’t think we could ever be friends.”

“Why not?”

Alex shakes her head, backing up against the headboard. She sits with her legs apart and pats the space between, like she’s saying, _Come here._ Piper pouts as she approaches, settling on her knees.

“Answer my question.”

“I just—I don’t think we’d ever be friends,” says Alex. “I mean—I _love_ you.” _And apparently not even my friend._ Piper finds herself flinching. “Sorry.”

“No,” Piper says. “It’s—I understand, I was remembering something else.”

“I don’t think I could be your friend—not in any alternate universe, or whatever,” Alex says. “You, me, this--I think, inevitably, this is how _all_ the permutations would turn out.”

“And that’s supposed to make me feel how?” Piper asks, crawling into Alex’s arms. _Home,_ she can’t help but think. _Home, home, home—_ “Hopeful?”

“Up to you,” Alex says, her voice deep. Piper snuggles closer to feel the characteristic rumble of it from underneath her chest. “How are you feeling now?”

“Terrified,” Piper says. “How did we even get here?”

Alex sighs. Piper presses her ears closer to her chest, if only to hear her breathing more clearly; her heart beating steadily. “You tell me, kid.”

Piper breathes her in; Alex still smells like all their foreign cities--all these places in the world she’d never see the same way again. “If I close my eyes now—I’d lose you again, right?”

“Pretty much,” says Alex. She turns to her, running her fingers idly into Piper’s hair. “Won’t be the first time, though.”

“Not funny,” Piper says.

“Wasn’t that the _whole_ point of erasing me?”

 _What was the point, to begin with? Revenge? A settling of scores?_ “I don’t even remember anymore,” Piper admits. Right here, Alex is looking at her like she did in that prison bed. _I heart you – like I love you for pussies._

_Fuck._

“I want it to stop,” she tells Alex, nails digging into her shirt. The urgency sends Piper’s heart to her throat, making it difficult to breathe.

“You think I didn’t try?” Alex looks at her like she’s saying, _Sorry I failed you._

“What do we do?” Piper is frantic. _I have decided I’d like to keep you. What now?_

Alex plants a soft kiss on her forehead. “You’ll know where to find me,” she just says.

*

Piper wakes alone in a bed that’s right on the shore. It is snowing.

*

Piper walks up to a house that vaguely resembles their Northampton apartment. She thinks _vaguely,_ because she doesn’t remember it like this at all – in her head, it had always been some kind of castle, and not this decrepit shack.

“The paint’s peeling,” Alex says, standing right beside her on the curb. She’s in _those_ party clothes, and Piper feels her throat go dry. Alex is holding an empty wine glass in one hand, a champagne bottle in the other, but when she pours, nothing comes out.

“Champagne’s empty,” Piper says, and Alex laughs, throwing the bottle aside. “Can we go inside?”

“After you.”

The floorboards creak. The house looks like all the houses they’ve ever been in – one nook looks like Alex’s old apartment with Sylvia; there’s a book shelf that Piper recognizes from her old room.

The living room, however, is definitely Northampton – the rug, the leather sofa, the low table in the middle of the room with Alex’s Lonely Planet guides. Alex picks one up idly – it’s the Lonely Planet guide to China.

“Remember Shanghai?” Alex asks, leafing through it briefly before tossing it on the sofa. “Remember how we nearly missed that flight…”

“Because the receptionist couldn’t find a fucking stapler,” Piper finishes. “Fucking Shangri-la, wasn’t that?”

“Could be,” Alex nods. She looks around, eyeing the walls with that sad, muted look in her eye. “This used to be my _empire_.” Alex’s smile is small, like she is almost embarrassed to say something like that. “All the plans we made here.”

Piper fiddles with an old map they’d taped against one wall, tracing the old marks they made – Bali. Athens. Istanbul. _We were here and here and here._ She runs a nail across one edge, smoothing out the crease there. “We were full of plans, weren’t we?”

“All those plans for two.” Alex sits on the couch, thumbing through another book. “We were a team.”

“Alex.” Piper takes a step closer. There’s that rumbling again from under her shoes, like the basement is falling apart. “They’re _here_.” The staircase goes first, then the book cases. Alex reads on, crossing her legs even, unperturbed. “Come _on_.”

Unmindful of falling debris, Alex just says, “Leave me.”

“What the _fuck_ Alex?” says Piper, looking up to find the ceiling slowly disintegrating, and Piper has to shield her eyes from the fine dust. “I’m _not_ leaving you here.”

“Won’t be the first time—”

“Now is _not_ the right time to pull unfair shit like this on me,” Piper says, exasperated. She stretches out a hand and beckons Alex to come closer and reach for it. “Alex?”

Alex just looks at her, brow raised, her lips pressed together in a faint thin line. She says nothing as slowly she fades to black, right before Piper’s disbelieving eyes.

*

There’s losing Alex, and _then_ there’s losing Alex while looking her straight in the eye. Piper blinks, adjusting to the dark. The sofa’s empty. Overhead, the roof is gone, and the sky is all clouds with not a star in sight.

 _She was here,_ she thinks. _And then she wasn’t. How fucked is this?_ She gets out of the house quickly, careful to avoid the potholes on the ground. She exits the door in a half-run; she does not have to look over her shoulder to know that the Northampton apartment’s crumbling.

 _All those plans for two._ Piper walks on, wiping at her face. _Shit._

_Leave me._

Piper keeps walking. After making a random turn, the road turns into cobblestones, and the next thing she knows, she’s walking through a row of old cinemas she cannot place exactly – _Is this Bonn? Maybe._ The path has that _post-Alex-fight_ feel, and walking here now, Piper is overcome by a flurry of feelings – that mixture of fondness and disappointment clouding the space inside her chest.

 _Alex?_ Out of the corner of her eye, Piper spies familiar movement – a tall, dark-haired woman of similar body build, turning away just _so_. “Alex?” The woman looks over her shoulder briefly, carrying a shadow of Alex’s profile. “Alex!”

The moment reminds Piper of Chicago, only the woman does not turn around, not fully, before ducking into one of the alleys.

_God damn it._

Piper runs, turning right at the corner where Could-Be-Alex disappeared. Not too far in, there is a door, which Piper opens thoughtlessly. _Nowhere else to go but here._

Inside, Piper finds herself thrust into a room full of _people,_ and she feels a chill wrap around her spine upon realizing where she is.

 _Well, shit,_ she thinks, looking around. When she turns toward _that_ corner, she finds Alex taking shots with her old girl friends, shivering afterward and giving her shoulders a little shake.

She’s found the burlesque bar. _Of all the memories to erase,_ she thinks, following Alex with her eyes as she makes her way to the restroom. _I want to taste what you taste like._ The thought twists her insides in that way she’d always somewhat craved.

Piper counts to three before walking after her, but when she gets to the corridor, it is empty. _Oh come fucking on._ Piper grits her teeth, pushing the door to the bathroom open – also empty. _Where the hell are you?_  

When she backs out into the bar, she finds herself in Alex’s bedroom instead, watching Alex stir awake. _Holy shit, this is some trippy stuff._ “Alex?” Piper sits on the edge of her bed, waiting.

Alex breathes in, that tell-tale sound of her coming out of sleep. “Oh,” she says, feeling around for her glasses. “Hey you.” Her voice is still thick with sleep, and Piper feels her heart falter a little.

“Hey.” Piper knows where this memory is from, and she almost does not want to go through it, because playing it through means sooner or later she’s about to lose it. _Please let me keep this one. Just this one._

“Did you love her?”

Alex stretches, putting her glasses on. “No,” she says, before adding, all too shyly: “But I love you.”

 _Please let me keep this one._ Piper remembers all too vividly how this felt: Like her chest was going to collapse from all that _feeling,_ and oh, how Alex had looked at her that moment – like she didn’t know a thing about love before then.

“I don’t just say that to anyone,” says Alex, off Piper’s silence. “You have to say it back.”

“I—” Piper feels her voice leave her, like her throat’s closing up. _No._ She gasps, trying to draw in a breath; she feels like drowning. _You have to say it back._ Piper opens her mouth, but no sound comes out.

“You have to say it back,” Alex says again, the disappointment on her face growing. “ _Piper._ ”

 _I am fucking trying,_ Piper wants to say. She reaches out for her, but when Piper’s hands get close, she touches nothing but air.

Just like that, Piper’s alone again, this time in Alex’s old bed, her mouth open in a soundless cry.

*

Piper wakes to a deep-seated ache in her head and a glass of water by her bed.

 _That was some long, fucked-up dream,_ she thinks, trying to remember even just a _sliver_ of it; Piper finds her head frustratingly empty, like a board that had just been wiped clean.

_Well, shit._

*

At some point, Piper realizes one thing: _I have to get out of here._ So she packs in some of her things and just _leaves_ , plans be damned. Bag in hand, she wanders aimlessly in Schiphol, pondering her next move.

There’s a woman scanning flights, furiously patting her pockets, and Piper can’t help but be _drawn_ to her. “Here,” she cuts in, pen in hand. “You look like you could use this.” _A pen, Piper? Really?_

To Piper’s surprise, the woman turns to her, only the slightest bit surprised. “I do,” the woman says. “May I?” She gives Piper a small smile as she takes the pen in one hand and pulls out a small notebook with the other. Piper swallows hard at the feel of her hand brushing against hers lightly with the movement.

“Where to?” Piper asks.

“Not sure yet,” says the woman, not looking up from her notebook.

“A spontaneous traveler,” says Piper, smiling. “Wow.”

 “I’m just looking for something.”

“Everybody’s looking for something.”

The woman finally pauses to look up from her notebook – when she catches Piper’s eye, it’s like she’s truly seeing her for the first time. Piper blinks. _Well, don’t you look like someone I know?_ “And what are _you_ looking for?”  

Piper takes a moment to be stunned. “I’m not sure either.”

“Spontaneous,” the woman says, smiling as she looks down. “ _Wow._ ”

Piper feels like laughing. _Twenty seconds in and we’re already at snark? Okay._ “Fine,” Piper says. “You didn’t answer my question – where are you _going_?”

She stares at the flight schedules quietly, her eyes darting around a bit before shrugging. “I don’t know. Nanning, maybe.”

“What’s in Nanning?”

“Just somewhere I’ve never been.”

“Clean slates?” Piper offers. “You’re into that sort of thing?”

“You can say that,” the woman replies, nodding. “Are you always this chatty with strangers?”

 _Strangers? You hardly feel like one,_ Piper thinks, studying this woman’s face. _Definitely not a stranger._ “Oh,” she begins, still laughing. “Sorry. I don’t feel like we’re strangers though.”

The woman gives her a curious look before laughing along. “Just two people who don’t know each other’s names yet, am I right?”

 _Right,_ Piper blinks, realizing how they’d been talking namelessly for the past handful of minutes. “Piper Chapman,” she says immediately, offering her hand. “And you are?”

“My name is Alex.”

Piper feels her mouth go dry as Alex fixes her glasses and clears her throat. “Alex,” she repeats softly. “And what do you do? Aside from wander in airports without so much as a pen?”

Alex laughs, shaking her head. “I’m not quite sure,” she says. “You want to stay and find out?”

*


End file.
